THE STARLIGHT
"Where you going?" demanded Swing Tunstall.
"Over the hills and far away to pick the wild violets," chanted Racey.
"You wanna come along? Better not. Them violets are just too awful
wild. Dangerous. Yeah. Catch yore death."
"You idjit! You plumb fool! Can't you let well enough alone? Ain't you
satisfied till yo're ticklin' the mule's hind leg? If yo're crowded,
hop to it. Make 'em hard to find. But why go a-huntin' trouble? Whatsa
sense? What--"
"Always get the jump on trouble, Swing. Always. Then you'll find
trouble don't wear so many guns after all and is a heap slower about
pulling 'em than you thought likely."
"But if they're all four of 'em together now, and you--"
"I ain't said I was going to do anything, have I? Gawda-mighty, Swing,
I only want to go and ask how Nebraska's gettin' along. Only tryin' to
be neighbourly. Yeah. Neighbourly."
Racey Dawson nodded his head as one does when a subject is closed,
hitched up his chaps, and started blithely round the hotel. Swing
Tunstall followed in haste, caught up with his friend and fell into
step at his side.
"This ain't any of yore muss, Swing," Racey said, mildly.
"It's gonna be," was the determined reply. "You shut up."
Racey grinned at nothing and stuck his tongue in his cheek. A warmly
pleasant glow permeated his being. It was good to have a friend like
Swing Tunstall--one who would not interfere but who would be in alert
readiness for any contingency. And Racey was well aware that in his
impending visit to the Starlight the contingencies were apt to be many
and varied.
"It's so early in the day I don't guess none of 'em will be in the
dance hall yet," murmured Swing Tunstall.
"I'm gonna drop in on the Starlight first, anyway," said Racey. "It's
nearer."
Through a side window they inspected the Starlight and the customers
thereof. Only two customers were visible. These, a long man and a
short man, stood at the bar, their backs to the window and their hands
cupped lovingly round glasses of refreshment. The tall man was talking
to the bartender.
"This getting up so early in the mornin' is a fright," they heard
him complain. "But bunking with a invalid shore does keep you on the
jump."
He and his companion drank. Racey Dawson and Swing Tunstall glided
rapidly along the wall to a side entrance. When the tall man and the
short man set down their glasses Racey Dawson was leaning against the
bar at a range of approximately six feet. Swing Tunstall stood at his
back and slightly to the right. Thus that, should necessity warrant a
resort to lethal weapons, Racey might not mask the latter's fire.
"Liquor," said Racey to the bartender.
The latter, an expert at his trade, with a jerk of both wrists slid
two glasses and a bottle down the bar so that a glass stopped in front
of each man and the bottle came to a standstill between them. Racey
spun a dollar on the bar. The bartender nonchalantly swept the dollar
into the cash drawer and resumed his chit-chat with the tall man. At
which Racey's eyes narrowed slightly. But he made no comment.
Pouring out a short drink, he passed the bottle to his comrade. When
Swing had filled Racey took the bottle, drove home the cork with the
heel of his hand, and carefully tucked away the bottle in the inner
pocket of his vest.
"It won't ride any too well," he observed to Swing, "but it ain't
gonna be there a great while, I guess."
"You bet it ain't gonna be there a great while!" horned in the
outraged bartender. "You put that bottle back on the bar!"
"Why, I gave you a dollar," said Racey, nervously, hesitantly, "and
you kept the change. I supposed, of course, you was selling me the
bottle."
"You supposed wrong!" As he spoke the bartender's right hand moved
toward the shelf that Racey knew must be under the top of the bar.
"That dollar was for yore two drinks."
"You mean to say yo're charging four bits apiece for those drinks!"
"Shore I am." As yet the bartender's hand had remained beneath the bar
top.
"But two bits is the regular price," objected Racey, weakly.
"Four bits is the price to you," was the truculent statement, sticking
out his chin. "_Put that bottle back on the bar_!"
As he gave the order his right shoulder hunched upward, and his
face set like iron. He had what is known as a "fighting" face, this
Starlight bartender. It was evident that he banked largely on that
face. It had served him well in the past.
"One dollar is my regular price for a bottle," Racey said gently
as the bartender's hand suddenly nipped into sight clutching a
sixshooter, "but if you want it back, take it."
Racey's fingers gripped the bottle-neck and fetched it forth. But
instead of placing it on the top of the bar as requested, he continued
the motion, as it were, and smote the bartender across the head
with it. Being a quart bottle and reasonably full of liquid, the
bartender's chin came down with a chug on the bar. Then he slumped
quietly to the floor behind the bar. The sixshooter relinquished by
his nerveless fingers remained on top of the bar between the whiskey
glasses.
Racey stared speculatively at the long man and the short man. They in
turn regarded him with something like respect. The long man wore a
drooping, streaky-yellow horseshoe of a moustache dominated by a long
and melancholy nose. Flanking the base of this sorrowful nose was a
pair of eyes hard and bright and the palest of blue.
The short man was a blobby-nosed creature, who sported a three days'
growth of red beard and a quid of chewing in the angle of a heavy jaw.
Now he revolved the tobacco with a furtive tongue and spat thickly
upon the floor.
Without removing his eyes from the two aforementioned gentlemen Racey
reached for the bartender's gun. "Hadn't oughta be trusted with
firearms," he observed, pleasantly, referring to what lay behind the
bar. "Too venturesome. Yeah."
He thoughtfully lowered the hammer of the sixshooter and rammed it
down to the trigger-guard behind the waistband of his trousers.
"Do you gents know anybody named Doc Coffin?" inquired Racey.
"I'm him," nodded the tall man, the pale eyes beginning to glitter.
"Then maybe you can tell me how Nebraska Jones is gettin' along?"
"You worrying about his health?" put in the short man.
"I dunno as I'd say 'worrying' exactly," disclaimed Racey, easily.
"You can take it I'm just askin', that's all."
"Nebraska had oughta be as well as ever he was in about a month,"
supplied Doc Coffin. "And," he added, significantly, "I dunno but what
he'd oughta be able to shoot as well as ever."
"I don't doubt it a mite," said Racey with a smile. "Question is, will
he?"
The short man gave a short, harsh laugh. "He will, you can gamble on
that," he averred, and spat again.
"That's good hearing," Racey said, looking quite pleased. "Of course I
was only judging by past performances."
"His gun caught," Doc Coffin explained, kindly.
"Why don't he try filing off his foresight?" inquired Racey, chattily.
"Or else he could shoot through his holster. Lots of folks do business
that way. I suppose now you'll be seeing Nebraska in a day or two
maybe."
"I might," admitted Doc Coffin.
"Friend of his?" purred Racey.
"I might be." Doc Coffin's spare frame grew somewhat rigid.
"Well," Racey drawled softly, "I heard Nebraska's friends are looking
for me. I'm here to save 'em the trouble of strainin' their eyes."
"So that's it, huh?" Doc Coffin grinned, as he spoke, like a grieving
wolf. "They ain't no hurry, is they?"
"I expect I'll be round Farewell a spell," said Racey.
"Then they ain't no hurry," Doc Coffin told him smoothly.
"None a-tall," contributed the short man.
"That's the way to look at it," laughed Racey. "I shore don't care
anything about bein' pushed. Have a drink on me."
He slid in their direction the bottle with which he had knocked down
the bartender, and, accompanied and imitated by Swing Tunstall,
departed from that place crabwise.
When they were gone Doc Coffin looked at his companion.
"Asking for it, Honey," said Doc Coffin. "Just asking for it."
Then he went behind the bar, seized the senseless bartender by the
ankles and skidded him out on the barroom floor. The man whom Doc
Coffin had addressed as Honey (his other name was Hoke) spread his
legs and whistled when he glimpsed the three-inch cut running fore and
aft along the top of the bartender's skull. Blood from that cut had
dribbled and oozed over the major portion of the bartender's face and
shirt. For it had been the bartender's luck to hook his chin on the
edge of the lowest shelf when he dropped and he had perforce remained
crown upward.
Doc Coffin stood back and stared at the stertorously breathing lump on
the floor with a cold eye.
"Ain't he a mess?" he observed. "Ain't he a mess? I expect he'll be
right down peevish about it when he comes to."
"Think so?" Honey Hoke was not quite sure of the point of Doc's
remark.
"Yeah, I think so. I'm shore he will when I tell him how he was
kicked."
"Kicked?"
"Shore kicked. Kicked after he was down."
"How?"
"Didn't you see that feller Dawson kick Bull when he was down? Where
was yore eyes?"
"That's the way of it, huh? Well, it _might_ save trouble if Bull was
to go on the prod real vicious."
"Yo're whistlin'. They ain't no manner of reason for doin' a job
yoreself if you can get somebody else to do it for you."
When Bull came to he was lying on his cot in his little cubby hole
adjoining the back room of the Starlight. Over across from the bed Doc
Coffin was looking out of the grimy window. Behind the closed door
giving egress to the back room certain folk were busy at faro. "King
win, ten lose," the dealer was saying.
Doc Coffin turned at the rustle of Bull's slight movement. Doc nodded
grimly.
"How's the head?" he inquired.
Bull put up a hand to the bandage encircling his bullet head and swore
feelingly.
"Guess it does hurt some," was Doc's comment. "Doc Alton took
three stitches. Lucky you was still senseless. He had to use a
harness-needle."
Bull heartily damned Doc Alton, his methods, the faro players in the
next room, himself, and wound up with a blistering curse directed
against mankind in general and Racey Dawson in particular.
"Tha's right, Bull," Doc Coffin applauded dryly. "Cuss him out. Give
him hell. Must do you a lot of good."
Bull was understood to consign Doc Coffin to the region of lost souls.
"I'd go a leetle slow," advised Doc Coffin, gently. "Just a leetle
slow if I was you. Yo're on yore back now, but you'll be getting all
right in a li'l while, and it's just possible, Bull, I might take it
into my head to ask you what you meant by all them cuss words yo're
throwin' at me."
There was an icy glint in the pale blue eyes of Doc Coffin. Bull shut
up and subsided.
"What," queried Doc Coffin after a momentary silence, "was the matter
with you?"
"With me?"
"Shore, with you. Who'm I talking to? What was the matter with you,
anyway? Don't you know any better'n to go up against a jigger like
that Dawson man? Yo're too cripplin' slow with a gun, feller."
"Well, I--"
"Y'oughta had him twice while he was swinging that bottle.... Yeah,
twice, I'm tellin' you. You had time enough. But not you. You just
stood there like a bump on a log and let him hit you. Yo're a
fine-lookin' example of a two-legged man, you are. If you ain't
careful, Bull, some two-year-old infant is gonna come along and spit
in yore eye."
"He was so damn quick," alibied Bull. "I wasn't expectin' it."
"A whole lot of folks are underground because they didn't expect to
get what they got. Yo're lucky to be lyin' there with only a headache.
Still, alla same, he needn't 'a' kicked you."
"Huh? Kicked me? You mean to say he kicked me? Dawson kicked me?"
"Shore I mean to say Dawson kicked you. Kicked you when you was lyin'
there down and out and senseless."
A moment Bull lay quietly. Then when the full import of Doc Coffin's
words had percolated through and through his brain he pulled himself
to a sitting posture and swung a leg to the floor. Doc Coffin was
beside him instantly.
"Lie down, you idjit!" commanded Doc Coffin, and with no gentle hand
shoved Bull down upon his pillow. "Whadda you think yo're gonna do?"
"I'm goin' out and fill that ---- full of lead."
"Oh, you are, huh? Yo're gonna do all that? Tha's fine. Do you want a
quiet burial or a regular funeral?"
"Say--"
"Say yoreself, and say something sensible while yo're about it."
"Nobody can kick me and get away with it!" Bull declared,
passionately. "I'll--"
"Maybe you will, but not in a hurry. You start out after him now, and
you wouldn't last as long as a short drink in a roomful of drunkards.
Didn't you hear about Dawson's li'l run-in with Nebraska?"
"Hell, I _seen_ it!"
"You seen it, huh? And you _know_ what he done to you to-day, and
still you wanna paint for war now and immediate? No, Bully, not
a-tall. You listen to me. I got a better plan. A whole lot better
plan. Lookit...."